exploring copenhagen

we had a nice 5 days in copenhagen just being tourists - although walking all day on cobblestones is murder on the feet. i am sure i have a stress fracture in my left foot. the weather was fantastic - warmish and a clear, bright blue sky. copenhagen looks much different than amsterdam - the roads are really wide and the buildings large so it feels less quaint and cozy. however, it does not have an urban feel to it. it is very civilized and proper feeling - the streets and sidewalks are clean and everybody obeys the walk/don't walk signals.

like amsterdam, lots of people use bikes here, and their bikes were a lot nicer than the standard crappy dutch bike. and more people use helmets.

believe it or not, i took the kids to the Ripley's Believe It or Not. this was completely upon david's insistance and really not up my alley at all. it was located adjacent to our hotel and we passed by it several times - each time his curiousity was piqued more and more. it had an animatronic Quasimodo in the entrance which seemed fun to david from the doorway but once we paid our steep admission fee he could barely look at it. it was pretty painful to walk through but we did slowly so we could get our money's worth.. we also went into the Hans Christian Andersen exhibit which, while not totally fear-inducing, had the retelling of some pretty gruesome HCA stories. take the tin soldier and the matchstick girl for example. in the first, the tin soldier falls in love with a toy ballarina and both end up thrown into the fire. the latter is a story about a poor little girl who freezes to death. not exactly 'feel good' moments.

on saturday we went to watch the changing of the Royal Guard. we gathered right before noon and waited for the guards and their band to march into the palace grounds. the kids got a kick out of that. after walking and more walking i set off to find a laundromat for mike's upcoming week of continued travel. $10 later i had 1 load of washed and dried clothes.


later that day we went to Christiana. i shall dedicate an entire blog post to that subject soon. {edit: it appears beneath this post for some reason}

sunday was departure day but we had plenty of time to go to the National Museum of Denmark. the cherry on top was that it had free admission! finally, some value for the VAT we have been paying! we spent most of the time in the large children's section where the kids could play with swords and shields on a viking ship, play in a pakistani kitchen, build a brick wall by hoisting up baskets full of bricks, and draw pictures. we then had about and hour to zip through the regular exhibits of both national and international artifacts. at that point we were all completely exhausted and mentally preparing for the upcoming journey. we certainly did not do the museum justice as we flew through the exhibits.

when finished with the museum we parted ways with mike - he went back to the hotel to retrieve his luggage and then off to the airport for paris. the kids and i loaded up on food and drink for the train, fetched our own things, and headed for the train station. upon confirming we were at the right place as soon as we entered the station, we read a bit more harry potter and waited for our track assignment. i am not sure about the kids, but i was ready to be back in amsterdam and not go anywhere for a while. but first, a 15 hour train ride.